13 Facts About Shea Stadium

Origins of Shea Stadium go back to the relocations of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants in 1957, which left New York without a National League baseball team.

Shea Stadium was often criticized by baseball purists for many reasons, even though it was retrofitted to be a baseball-only stadium after the Jets left.

The move to Shea Stadium had been proposed earlier in the decade, but the Mets, as Shea Stadium's primary tenants, refused to sign off on the deal.

The Giants played their final five home games of 1973 and all seven in 1974 at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut; Yankee Shea Stadium was closed in October 1973 for a massive renovation, which was completed in time for the 1976 baseball season.

Football field at Shea Stadium extended from around home plate to centerfield, with the baseline seating rotating out to fill left and right fields.

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The concert was dubbed The Last Play at Shea Stadium, and featured many special guest appearances, including former Beatle Paul McCartney who closed the second show with an emotional rendition of the Beatles classic "Let It Be".

Between 1972 and 1980, Shea Stadium hosted a Showdown at Shea Stadium event three separate times, by the then World Wrestling Federation.

Ten days later Shea Stadium reopened for the first post-attack sporting event in New York where the Mets beat the Braves, behind a dramatic home run by Mets catcher Mike Piazza.

Recently on VH1's documentary series 7 Ages of Rock, Shea Stadium was named the most hallowed venue in all of rock music.

In Men in Black, a Mets game at Shea Stadium was featured in the film, with outfielder Bernard Gilkey dropping a fly ball after being distracted by an alien spacecraft in the sky.

Exterior part of the Shea Stadium is featured in the 2006 videogame Driver: Parallel Lines.

Unlike Yankee Stadium, Shea was built on an open field, so there was no need to have it conform to the surrounding streets.

In 2010, the original Shea Stadium apple was relocated outside the Citi Field, in front of the Jackie Robinson Rotunda.